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materialsforAssignment2.docxThe Scramble
The expansion of Western society reached its peak between 1880 and 1914. In those years, the leading European nations sent massive streams of migrants, money and manufactured goods around the world and rushed to create and enlarge vast political empires. The New Imperialism fueled by industrialization had earth-shattering consequences. It led to the dominance of more developed European nations over underdeveloped regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas. To put it bluntly, It put millions of people of color (black, brown and yellow) under the rule of whites.
There were many reasons for New Imperialism, European colonization, most significant are:
1. Economics , though often for individual and corporate advancement rather than national interest.
2. Geopolitics , geographically some of the nations were valuable for strategic reasons, i.e. the Suez Canal.
3. Nationalism , to enhance national prestige governments competed in the colonial race. Combined with the extreme sense of national pride was a conviction that Africans were inferior to and it was the White Man s Burden to civilize and Christianize indigenious people. The conquest of Africa was viewed as scientific proof of the racial superiority of whites.
The most spectacular example, and most significant to this course, of the new imperialism was the seizure of Africa. As late as 1880, 80% of the continent of Africa was under the control of indigenous populations. The major exceptions were Algeria which the French had begun conquering in 1830 and at the other end of the continent, South Africa, where the British had taken possession of the Dutch settlement at Cape Town during the wars with Napoleon I. Additionally a few European trading posts and forts dotted the coast of West Africa and the Portuguese proudly but ineffectively held Angola and Mozambique. But, elsewhere over the vastness of the continent, Europeans did not rule.
Between 1880 and 1900, the situation changed dramatically. While African diseases and fear of the indigenous population had deterred Europeans for exploration within the interior of Africa for centuries, the discovery of quinine and the invention of the Maxim gun, provided Europeans with the edge needed to assume control of the Continent. Armed with these innovations, explorers began to cut their way through the African jungle — and natives.
Great Britain led the way in African colonization with colonies in South Africa and snatching control of Egypt from the French. The French then invaded Tunisia and were immediately followed by the Belgians. To avoid the obvious, Europeans rushed to claim territory in Africa. Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Germany, at the request of Portugal called the West African Conference of Berlin. At the Conference, 13 European nations and the United States met to decide the fate of the continent and protect their sphere of influence -- Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, and Turkey.
Britain, France, Germany and Italy scrambled for African possessions as if their nation s existence was at stake. By 1900, nearly the whole continent had been carved up and placed under European rule which was a result of the Berlin Conference of 1884. The Conference set the ground rules that states claiming authority would have to produce proof of economic development in the region claimed. Only Ethiopia, in northeast African, and Liberia on the West African coast, remained independent. In the years before 1914, the European powers tightened their control and established colonial governments to rule their gigantic empires.
The Berlin Conference was Africa's undoing. The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African continent, so much so that by the time independence started to returned to Africa in 1950, the Continent had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfactorily (Source: Rosenberg). What occurred was the splintering of the Continent without rhyme or reason. Traditional boundaries were broken, tribal alliances and conflicts were disregarded. The dissection of Africa split the continent into 50 irregular countries, that split groups that had lived and worked in harmony and merged groups those that traditionally had not (Source: Rosenberg).
Examples of Imperial Rape
The Congo provides the cruelest and bloodiest example of the European scramble in Africa. In 1839, Belgium gained her independence from the Netherlands. As a sovereign state, Belgium was obligated by treaty to remain neutral in European affairs. Consequently, as the rest of the Western Europe was jockeying for power and formal alliances, Belgium was required to stand-on the sidelines and observe. Belgium, or more accurately, King Leopold I, saw the creation of an empire in Africa as the key to Belgium s status among the power elites in world affairs.
In 1876 at the International African Association, King Leopold II established lofty goals for European intervention. He started to open all sections of the only place of our globe which has not yet [been] penetrated, to purge the darkness which heaps over entire peoples is, I dare say, a crusade worthy of this century of progress (Source: Nolan, 1999). To the Parliament of Belgium, which opposed African colonization, he declared [If] Belgium doesn't [have a taste to] explore the world. . . it's a taste we have got to make her learn (Source: Roxburgh, 2005).
Using explorer Henry Morton Stanley, Leopold charged him with purchasing all land available, collecting tolls on roads built by Belgium, and hording all available ivory. Officially, the new colony belonged personally to Leopold II as personal property, not to the state of Belgium. With treaties in hand, Leopold established a military dictatorship over a land mass 76 times larger than Belgium. Initially, mercenaries were employed to enforce Leopold's will. At its peaks, 19,000 conscripted Africans were under the command of 420 white Belgium officers.
Before the Conference of Berlin, Leopold, largely through bribery, gained official recognition from the United States, of his control of the Congo. France wavering in the wind and seeking allies, followed. The Conference of Berlin, confirmed the actions of the U.S. and France and endorsed the Free State of the Congo as the private property of Leopold II. Once ownership of the Congo was secure, Leopold was free to exploit the region without fear of European sanction.
Shortly after the Conference concluded, the international demand for rubber soared, a resource readily available in the Congo. The native population was forced to seek vines in the jungle. Because it was illegal to pay any African money, other tactics were used to force the submission of the laborers.
In 1899, the British vice consul reported to London how the Force Publique carried out their duties. He stated: The officers methods. . . was to arrive in canoes at a village, the inhabitants bolted on the arrival; the soldiers then. . . commenced lootings, taking all the chickens, grain, etc. out of the houses; after this they attacked the natives until able to seize the women, these women were kept as hostages until the chief of the district brought in the required number of kilograms of rubber. The rubber having been brought, the women were sold back to their owners. . . and so he continued from village to village until the required amount of rubber had been collected (Source: Nolan, 1999).
An account in 1884 described by an officer Fievez reported I made war against them. One example was enough, a hundred heads cut-off, and there have been plenty of supplies ever since. My goal is ultimately humanitarian, I killed hundred. . . but that allowed fiver hundred others to live(Source: Nolan, 1999). The Swedish press reported that Leopold s soldiers were rewarded for the number of hands amputated as punishment.
Leopold II was absolute rule of the Congo. His rule, by the accounts of his contemporaries, was brutal and millions of Congolese died. As rumors of the atrocities in the Congo circulated, the corporate financial backing eroded forcing him to borrow money from the Belgium government. By 1908, the Belgian government publicly acknowledged the cruelty of Leopold's rule and forced him to turn over control of the Congo Free State to state rule and the name was changed to the Belgian Congo. Under Belgium rule, improvements, though modest, were noted for the Congolese. Though two unequal worlds were maintained, schools, railways, and industrial areas were built.
When Boers, Dutch settlers, migrated to South Africa, conflicts broke out between them and Shaka's troops. But, the constant conflicts with the Boers were never a real threat to the sovereignty of the Zulu Nation. That changed with the discovery of mineral resources in Southern Africa. This mineral revolution, as historians like to term it, began in the modern region of Kimberly in 1869.
Diamond fields in the territory partly under control of the Boers and partly under control of the Griqua, were the initial source of dispute. There were thousands of individuals, blacks from Southern Africa and whites from Europe who decended upon the region. Australia and America, converged and vied for supremacy over the fields. The British, not to be outdone or denied the vast wealth, set-up a court of inquiry to settle the disputes. The Griqua chief sought British military support against the Boers, which was the only justification the British needed to annex what was then the richest known diamond territory in the world.
British supremacy in technology and capital acquisition quickly shifted the balance of power solely into their favor. Initially, the mine was worked by individual diggers, most of whom were white. Each digger staked-out a small claim, which he worked alongside black laborers. But, by the late 1870s, the mines had become open pits requiring expensive machinery to work. Individual claims holders gave way to large corporations, most notably De Beers.
Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers Mining Company, eventually control 90% of the world's diamond production. With his monopoly firmly in place the role of Africans was redirected to cheap manual labor, and the Boers were reduced to competition that had to be crushed (The Boer Wars). Rhodes master plan was to establish a Cape to Cairo railroad line, that would link Egypt to the Cape Colony in Southern Africa -- A plan neither the Boer's or the African's willingly accepted.
Africans desiring to work for De Beers were forced to sign low-wage six-month contracts, live in fenced compounds and separate from their families. The mines of Kimberley employed up to 50,000 black laborers a year. They came from colonies, republics, and kingdoms to seek the wages offered and it was the first experience for many with a cash based economy. Though low, the wages were high enough to purchase guns, which was the ultimate goal of those who traveled great distances to Kimberley. These Africans returned home with guns to defend their territory from further white encroachment.
The British Challenged
The end of Zulu sovereignty came at the hands of the British, but not without a significant cost the British. The invincible British military, proved vulnerable and experienced one of the deadliest and humiliating defeats in British history. By 1870, the British had adopted a forward policy in Southern Africa. The intent of the policy was to bring all people in together under the control of them.
Included in this policy was the vision to implement economic development in the region, specifically to facilitate the excavation of goods for the boughs of the earth and to transport such goods efficiently and effectively to Western cultures in trade. Sir Heny Bartle Frere saw the sovereign, economically viable Zulu kingdom as a direct threat to his success.
Frere viewed the British military as the greatest in the world and therefore could not conceive of a scenario under which the ill-armed Zulu's would be a threat. In December 1878, Frere picked a fight with the Zulu king Cetshwayo kaMpande. Before the war the Tugela River formed the boundary between Zulu territory and Natal, British territory. When Cetshwayo became king he refused to to submit British hegemony. A army of 40 - 60,000 men was called and prepared for battle. In December 1878, Cetshwayo was given an ultimatum - disband the Zulu army and pay reparations for insults against the British people and crown or suffer the consequences.
Cetshwayo refused to respond, which promoted the British under Lord Chelmsford, to attack. Arrogant, the British invaders advanced into Zululand without using advance scouts or sentries. The Zulu army attacked and annihilated the central British column at Isandhlwana, killing 1300 British soldiers and their African allies, taking nearly 1,000 rifles, with ammunition, as they fled (Source: The Zulu War 1878-1879). When the news reach British shores of the devastating defeat at Isandhlwana, there was an uproar.
Sporadic battles broke-out over the opening months of 1879 while Lord Chelmsford reorganized his troops and waited for reinforcements from Britain, most which saw the Zulu as victors. Favor began to shift to the British when they repelled a Zulu attack on their camp on March 29, 1879. As fresh British troops arrived in Southern Africa, the stage was set for the final invasion of Zululand, battles which lasted from May through July 1879. King Cetshwayo conceded defeat and requested terms of surrender, which the British refused demanding an unconditional surrender.
In many respects, the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 was merely the first act in the protracted destruction of the Zulu kingdom. British policy was to destroy the unity of the nation by undermining the influence of the Zulu Royal House, and to prevent the Zulus posing a further threat to British settler interests in the region. Their systematic policy to break up the institutions of the old Zulu sate led to deep divisions within the country, to civil war and ultimately to the dispossession of the Zulu people (Source: Knight, 2006).
Early nineteenth century Zululand was a South African military empire. Under the leadership of Shaka kaSenzangakhona, the Zulu's built a military that changed the nature of warfare from an African perspective and the misconceptions the powerful British Empire had about Africa. The British hoped to bamboozle a superstitious primitive, but were taken off-guard by a cunning and ruthless warrior who had unified vast territories through a combination of political charisma and military discipline (Source: Fetzer).
Shaka's illegitimate birth, should be irrelevant, but likely serves as the explanation for the ruthlessness and drive that defined him. Shaka witnessed the mistreatment of his mother and withstood the ridicule of his peers. Though treated as an outsider, through his mother he learned his royal heritage, the grandson of a chief from his mother's tribe (eLangeni) and son of the Zulu chief.
Shaka's military story began before his ascension to the throne of the Zulu nation as a warrior for the Mtetwa tribe, which ruled the Zulu. As a solider he proved to be virtually invincible. He believed in total conquest and resented when a weaker tribe succumbed to his troops before warfare took place. Tradition credits him with the creation of a dangerous weapon called the iKlwa, a short stabbing-spear. Dingiswayo, the king, impressed by his strength, groomed Shaka to ascend to the throne (Source: Who is Shaka Zulu?, 2002).
Upon Dingiswayo death, warring tribes vied for domination of the Mtetwa Empire. Shaka won the battles and was king of all the territories in Natal and Southeast Africa by 1820. During his reign he took the population under his control from 1,500 to over 250.000.
His military philosophy was total annihilation. Total loyalty was demanded from his troops, less than that was rewarded with death. Soldiers were drilled to hone their skills and precision. Within the ranks was a division of labor with some men dedicated to nothing more than improving and devising new military weaponry. Light throwing javelins were replaced with iklwas, heavy bladed throwing spears. Larger shields were introduced made of heavy cowhide and men were trained to use the shield to hook the enemies' shield and thus expose the adversary to a fatal stab. And, to toughen his men, Shaka forced them to train and fight in barefeet (Source: Shaka Zulu, 2003).
His quest for learning made him highly intelligent and witty. His viciousness made him feared and respected by local tribes and whites. His skill as an excellent chess player wooed the British who initially, as allies, collaborated with Shaka to conquer territory, in exchange for which they acquired land. In 1824, an injured Shaka was treated by an Englishmen, in appreciation he permitted English traders to operate in his territory and attempted, unsuccessfully, to send a Zulu ambassador to England.
Shaka's demise came from within the Zulu state. His arbitrary cruelty and oftentimes erratic behavior led to discontentment among his troops. On September 23, 1828, at the age of 41, his two half-brothers assassinated Shaka and buried his remains in an unmarked grave, a sign of disrepect.
Shaka's legacy continued 50 years after his death. His half-brother Dingane, murdered his coconspirator in the death of Shaka and assumed sole leadership of the Zulu Nation. Though new leadership now lead the military, they continued to employ the training, weaponry, and tactics Shaka had effectively instituted during his reign. Tactics that made the Zulu a fierce adversary to the Dutch and British.
